A Small Miracle Happened

by Mari Donne

  Chris surprised Dan again by taking a step forward, setting his big hand on the back of Dan’s neck, then tilting his head up for a kiss.

  The sweetness of the wine and those sugar cookies overwhelmed him at first, and then faded into the taste of Chris himself, strong and male. Dan found himself backed against a wall, trapped by the bulk of the bigger man. Chris wasn’t much taller, but his shoulders were broader, and he had at least fifteen pounds of solid muscle on Dan. But Dan didn’t feel threatened. There was nothing coercive in the way Chris kissed him, nuzzled his neck, and ran gentle hands up and down his spine. Dan realized Chris deliberately left space between them, touching with his mouth and hands, but not crushing their bodies together. Those sweet, openmouthed kisses were a question, not a demand.

  Dan answered by slipping his hands around Chris’s neck, drawing him in. Chris gasped as their bodies connected, hard and needy. Dan ground his hips against a promising bulge in Chris’s jeans. Chris groaned and, in a sudden move, grabbed Dan’s ass.

  Dan wasn’t sure who started fumbling at waistbands first, but he suspected he was the culprit. He was sure he liked the feel of the thick cock that almost fell into his hand. When it slid silkily against his own, he had to bite down on his lip to keep from coming too quickly.

  He needed even more control when Chris’s hand wrapped around both cocks, then rubbed them together. His thumb flicked over the heads, and Dan lost all power of conscious thought for the next several endless minutes.

  As he came, Chris’s mouth crushed down on his again, tongue shoving inside with no gentleness now. Dan was suddenly aware that he’d been shoved hard against the wall. He was glad of its support as Chris continued to grind into him. Dan’s knees had gone weak, and he was shaking in reaction.

  Chris came a few seconds later, giving a grunt of pleasure before he moved back half a step. They stood, foreheads pressed together, arms still around each other, panting. They were tucked into the corner next to the big front window. Dan was relieved they were out of sight from the street, even with the curtains thrown wide and the menorah doing its best to light the room with two small candles. Very slowly, far more cautiously than they had come together, they pulled apart.

  They smiled at each other with the awkwardness of two barely acquainted people who had just been privy to each other’s strongest sensations. Before either could speak, a phone began playing the incongruous notes of Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion.”

  Dan was going to let it go to voice mail, but when he recognized the ringtone, he jerked away, straightening his clothes as he rushed to accept the call. “Did she have the baby?” The words burst out of him in place of a more conventional greeting.

  He sagged as his mother’s voice responded in a soothing tone. “No, not yet. She had a doctor’s appointment today, though, and they said she’s starting to dilate, so it should be soon.”

  The only kind of dilation Dan was familiar with in a medical sense involved the eye doctor, and he was sure that wasn’t what his mother meant. Since he was also sure an explanation would appall him, he didn’t ask for one. “Okay. I hope she doesn’t go into labor in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “So say we all. Your father’s right here. He wants to talk to you.”

  Dan glanced at Chris, who was standing in the corner, tugging his sweatshirt down to hide his stained clothing. He ducked his head and moved toward the door, mouthing, I’d better go.

  “Just a second.” Dan held the phone to his chest. “You can stay.”

  Chris shook his head. “I have to change.” He was whispering. “But…do you have someplace to go tomorrow? For Thanksgiving dinner, I mean.”

  Dan almost wished he didn’t, because it sounded like Chris was about to ask him along to wherever he was going. But he nodded. “A coworker invited me to have dinner with his family.”

  Chris nodded back, then left by the front door as Dan went back to his conversation. Damn. He loved his parents, but they could have had better timing.

  Chapter Two

  Second night—Thursday

  Chris left Terry and Warren’s house before dessert was served. His face had hurt from the effort of smiling even before the turkey made an appearance. He finally bailed when Terry started arguing with his father. Everyone else had seen the verbal brawl coming and fled to the kitchen, leaving Chris sitting in the middle of a fight about some construction job. Terry was a good friend, but he and his father were always having screaming matches fueled by the stress of the family business. No one could explain to Chris why they continued to work together.

  Terry’s husband, Warren, didn’t even try. When Chris slipped into the kitchen to say his farewells, Warren just rolled his eyes. Terry’s mom apologized, handed Chris a plastic plate covered with plastic wrap, and thanked him for coming.

  He thanked them for having him before escaping, feeling guilty. But he wasn’t used to that level of acrimony and didn’t know how to cope with it. His own family was well behaved to the point of being pathological, which was why he hadn’t been invited to their house this year. His father was sorry, but sharing dinner with a homosexual would make most of the Parsons clan uncomfortable. His mother assured Chris he was welcome to Sunday dinner as long as he checked first to make sure Uncle Martin and Aunt Debbie weren’t coming too. Apparently Uncle Martin was incapable of digesting green bean casserole if there was a sodomite in the vicinity. Since the sight of Uncle Martin gave Chris heartburn, he tried not to let the situation bother him.

  He wondered if any family found a happy medium between those extremes, or if Thanksgiving was just an ironically named joke, an opportunity for people to make their nearest and dearest as unhappy as possible.

  Next year he should boycott the holiday. Find something else to do. He smiled, remembering the unexpected celebration he’d enjoyed with his neighbor last night. But from what Dan said, it was unlikely Hanukkah would coincide with Thanksgiving the following year. He’d have to make the most of the distraction it offered now.

  When he'd found the package on his doorstep the day before, Chris’s impulse was to shove it in a corner of his foyer until he could find time to take it to the post office and have them return it to the sender. But then he noticed the guy who lived across from him had just come home.

  Chris saw Dan watching him, and was fairly sure the glances weren’t motivated by disgust at the rainbow flag. And Chris certainly didn't feel any disgust at the sight of the slender man with a mop of black, curly hair. In fact, after catching sight of Dan raking leaves one afternoon, Chris had decided he was the only really decorative object Prince Albert Circle had to offer. The mysterious box made an excellent excuse for an introduction.

  He was surprised to find out the package actually did belong to Dan. His ploy turned out better than he anticipated. Dan smiled warmly and welcomed him in without hesitation. So little hesitation that Chris was tempted to warn him about stranger danger. But he didn’t want to plant a seed of doubt about himself, so he followed Dan into the living room, enjoying his delight at the box of childhood treasures.

  Up close, his neighbor was even better looking than he appeared from a distance, with a flirty, friendly personality that made him instantly likable. Chris quickly came to the conclusion that Dan was more than a bit out of his league.

  But Dan answered Chris’s questions about Hanukkah without mocking his ignorance, and even included him in that charming ceremony with the menorah. When Chris recited Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, Dan didn’t look confused or derisive. He seemed to understand and appreciate it, smiling so delectably that Chris moved on impulse, kissing that lush mouth. Dan’s reaction surprised him with its intensity.

  He flashed on the memory of Dan’s face in the shadows. When Chris wrapped his hand around their cocks, Dan bit deep into his lower lip and half closed his eyes as he made a sweet moaning sound. It was a good thing that vision came to Chris while he was stopped at a traffic light, because he needed a coup
le deep breaths to pull himself back into the present. The beep of a horn from the car behind him helped jar him back into motion.

  Now he cursed himself for running off when the phone had rung. But he’d been rattled and suddenly unsure of himself. He’d wanted time to sort out his feelings.

  He was still working on that sorting-out thing. And worrying that Dan had interpreted his abrupt leaving as a sign that all he’d wanted was a quick tumble in the twilight.

  If he’d stayed, maybe he could have talked Dan into going to Terry and Warren’s with him. They’d told him he could bring a date. On the other hand, if Dan hadn’t had another invitation, Chris would likely be explaining right now that his friends weren’t as psycho as they seemed, and that Terry was a nice guy when his dad wasn’t in the room.

  As he pulled in to his driveway and activated the garage door opener, he thought about giving Dan a call later and asking him how his Thanksgiving was. Except he hadn’t gotten Dan’s phone number the previous evening. Cursing himself again, he parked his truck and got out. A flicker of movement behind him made him turn. He smiled.

  A few moments later, he was standing on the sidewalk across the street as Dan pulled into a garage identical to his own. Then Dan was standing in front of the ugly condo, casual but stylish in an unbuttoned leather coat over a soft green sweater, jeans, and boots. The sweater fit snugly, emphasizing his height and slenderness. His clear, pale skin contrasted with his dark hair and eyes, and sharp cheekbones stood out in a face full of interesting planes and angles. Chris had no trouble envisioning him as one of the romantic poets he’d secretly mooned over as a teenager while other guys ogled female porn stars and cheerleaders. Then he realized he was staring stupidly into Dan’s warm eyes. He blushed. “Uh, hi.”

  Dan looked embarrassed at the scrutiny, and bit his lip. “Pie?” He held up something wrapped in aluminum foil and gestured at Chris’s hands.

  Chris glanced down at the plate Terry’s mom gave him. “Inevitably.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so, on Thanksgiving. They always send you away with something.”

  Chris smiled. “I always ask for the pie.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Dan clicked a fob on his keychain, and the garage door slid down obediently. “The family I was visiting must have invited thirty people. I never saw so much cranberry sauce go so fast. I was amazed there was anything left, but some pie survived. What kind is yours?”

  “Rhubarb.”

  Chris hoped Dan walking to the front door as he continued the conversation constituted an invitation, and sure enough, once he’d unlocked it, Dan held it open for Chris to pass inside. “I’ve got apple.”

  Chris laughed. “We can have our pie together after you light your menorah.”

  Dan peeked at him through flirtatious lashes. “Yeah, it’s my turn to light the candle tonight.”

  That sounded promising. Maybe Chris hadn’t screwed up too badly last night.

  The pie eaten and the menorah lighted, they sat on the couch watching the oddly hypnotic flames of the candles as they flickered in the window. Chris admired the way Dan had decorated the room. It wasn’t fussy, but the few pictures and knickknacks scattered around made it attractive and welcoming. Chris wondered how people did that. His own place still seemed sterile and bland, even though he’d unpacked all his stuff. He just didn’t have the right eye to make things beautiful.

  Feeling too big and lumbering for this place or his elegant host, he reached for his wineglass on a side table. It was next to a small bowl filled with foil-covered candies and the wooden top he’d noticed the previous evening. He picked up the brightly painted thing, examining the symbols on the sides. “Are these Hebrew letters?”

  “Yeah. They stand for ‘A great miracle happened there.’ A kind of acronym, I guess. My Hebrew is practically nonexistent. We used to play for chocolate coins like the ones my grandmother sent. You spin the dreidel around”—Dan demonstrated on the coffee table—“and when it stops, the symbol on top tells you what to take out of the pot: nothing, half, or all. But if it lands on shin, you have to put something in. And by the end of the game, any kid old enough to follow the rules has learned the letters.”

  “So it’s just a cute way to teach kids?” Chris wondered if Dan wanted to play for nostalgia’s sake. It didn’t sound very exciting, but Chris was willing to humor him. And there would be chocolate.

  “Yeah, but once I got older, I learned some interesting variations.”

  “Such as?”

  Dan’s expression was so sly Chris started laughing even before he said, “Strip dreidel.”

  That sounded much more exciting.

  They sat on the living room floor. It was cheap laminate designed to mimic wood, but the quality was poor, and it wasn’t fooling anyone. Chris thought of it as linoleum putting on airs. Dan had tossed some brightly colored rugs around to hide most of it. Now he rearranged two of the rugs so they could sit on them, with a bare spot in between to spin the dreidel.

  “We can change the rules around if you like, but this is how we played in my college dorm.” Dan laid the dreidel down so a symbol that looked a little like the letter W was on top. “This is shin. If you get this, you have to put something on.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah, unless you’re the only one almost naked, and everyone’s snickering.” Dan shivered, remembering either embarrassment, cold, or both.

  Chris winked. “Snickering isn’t my likely reaction to seeing you almost naked.”

  “That’s good to know.” Next Dan showed him a sort of backward C. “Nun. Do nothing.”

  “I hope we’re getting to better options soon.”

  Dan’s smile was wicked as he displayed an upside-down lowercase R. “Gimel. In the kid’s version, it means to take everything, but in strip dreidel, if there’s a bunch of people, you can make one of them strip, at least down to their underwear. But with just a few people, that could end everything fast. So we kind of varied it. Instead of one person taking off everything, everyone has to take off one thing.”

  Dan nodded. “I can deal with that. What’s the fourth letter?”

  “Hay. It means half, but instead of taking off half your clothes, you make someone else take one thing off.”

  “That works. But it’ll get boring if we keep landing on—what is it?—nun?”

  “Yeah, nun. There’s another variant for that.” Dan took a bottle of vodka off the coffee table and set it and a shot glass on the floor by his side.

  “Okay!” Chris didn’t need any more instructions. He picked up the dreidel. “And I feel lucky. Do we spin to see who goes first?”

  “You’re the guest.” Dan spread his hands and leered at Chris. He was too cute to come off as anything other than adorable. You’d think there’d be rules against guys being so pretty. But if there were, Chris was glad no one was around to enforce them.

  Chris spun. The dreidel landed on nun. Time to start on a good buzz, he thought as he poured himself a shot.

  Dan got gimel. They each removed a sweater, and Chris noted Dan checking out his abs when his shirt rode up during the process. Chris’s face might not be his best feature, but he took heart in the knowledge the game would let him uncover other assets. He spun and got hay. “Do I get to choose what you take off?”

  “Nope.” Dan, with a teasing smile, removed a sock. For his turn, he had to drink a shot, so they were even in alcohol consumption.

  After that the luck turned lopsided. Dan consistently landed on nun or gimel while Chris hit a string of hays and shins.

  Chris watched as Dan lost his other sock, his shirt, and his belt. He put on a show with the last two items, slipping the shirt off slowly and stretching to reveal his flat stomach and small, erect nipples. His chest was lightly dusted with black hair, but he made sure to flick open the snap at his waistband when he snaked off his belt, revealing a promising treasure trail.

  Chris shifted. His jeans were uncomfortably tight, and he hoped he
could get rid of them soon. He spun the dreidel. Shin.

  “Not fair!” Dan had a point. He was nearly down to his underwear while Chris had to go to the front door to retrieve his shoes. But it wasn’t as if Chris wanted to win the game, if keeping your clothes on could even be considered winning.

  Dan spun again and, to Chris’s disappointment, landed on shin. He pulled his sweater on and stuck out his tongue. Chris’s mouth watered at the sight. He tried to distract himself by asking Dan about the other times he’d played this game.

  Dan must have been out in college because no girls were mentioned as participants. It sounded like most sessions hadn’t turned into outright orgies, if only because so much alcohol was consumed the players weren’t fit for anything but naps by the end of the game. But the spinning dreidel had led to a number of hookups. Dan talked about a guy who offered to exchange blowjobs for bits of clothing. “Except he wanted other people’s clothes, like a designer sweater he lusted after more than the guy who wore it. And I know he liked my jeans more than what was in them.”

  “Did you take him up on the offer?”

  “Nah. I’d been there, done that, and frankly so had just about every gay guy in school, and a few supposedly straight ones too. I was trying to get this cute California dude out of his pants, but he went off with a Japanese exchange student and broke my heart.” Dan tried to look tragic, but only succeeded in grimacing comically, making Chris snort.

  “Beginner’s luck?” Chris suggested about himself a few spins later. He’d gotten rid of the shoes and sweater again, but he still had a shirt on. Dan was back down to just his jeans, and his bare chest and arms were starting to show goose bumps. Chris wanted to grab him and hold him close to warm him up. Before moving on to other activities.